Monday, November 17, 2014

N.B.A. Franchise Stars Rankings & The 85-Point Club

Who’s the most consistent winner for his own franchise in the history of National Basketball Assiociation? That’s the question I asked myself couple of years ago, in February 2007 to be precise. At that time, I decided to rank all franchise leaders since the 1979-80 season (28 guys made this initial list). You might remember it as the month of NBA All-Star weekend in Vegas, and of Phil Jackson saying to his Laker squad, "All you guys can do is play video games and watch porn movies." Good times. Roughly six years later, during one cold winter week, I proceeded to update the research finally, taking into consideration each and every quality player that has ever hooped in the best basketball league in the world. Of course, that means I eventually run into some difficulties: the primary one being the fact that basketballers in the 1950s and '60s played fewer games with fewer playoff rounds... but nonetheless, you can’t deny the overall career win percentages. Why win percentages? Throughout the years, I've read and seen tons of articles/books/videos on hoops history, and an intriguing idea popped up in my head -- which elite player had the best winning percentage for a particular team he played on (for at least seven consecutive seasons)? Why I decided to use the number seven as a cutoff? Hell, I don’t remember that. I just know a guy has to play at least seven full seasons for the same team in order to appear in these rankings. If he’s traded during his seventh season, e.g. Chris Webber in Sacramento, he’s ineligible, too. Seven seasons leading the same franchise is definitely worthy of franchise-star label. I created three categories (regular season, playoffs, and overall) then and ranked the unquestionable stars and their era's teams. In the end, I got to the number 50... which is nice and all, but #BasketballNeverStops and with the completion of the 2013-14, Kevin Durant became eligible for F.S.R. induction; I made a decision to add Elgin, Frazier, Cowens (total screw-ups by not including them earlier), Schayes, Arizin, Greer, Bing, Dumars and Yao, Bosh's Raptors years and Aldridge's eight Blazers campaigns as well, plus I had to take Earl Monroe (Clyde over the Pearl) and Adrian Dantley off the list (more on that later). Of these 60 hardwood superstars, whose fans had the best, most successful times following and cheering for their resident alpha dog? It bears mentioning: I know these rankings are somewhat inept and with holes all over the place -- it examines a player's whole career with his franchise, so either he could have been too young and green to contribute in the beginning or too old and creaky to be the force in his twilight days; I didn't have time or will to consider games missed due to injuries or whatever (Anyone who wants to explore that in their free time?)... however, in this new F.S.R edition, the rankings are slightly restructured, because I settled on excluding the seasons in which a player logged less than 30 games. Dantley played just 22 games in 1982-83, and as a result of this year being deleted from his Jazz resume, he was left with only six full Utah seasons. The-Diehards-Gonna-Shake-Their-Heads part: I certainly feel a little uneasy that my ranking spits out Ewing ahead of Hakeem in the 'B' category. But hey, you cannot have everything! As you'll see on the lists, I calculated an average of a player's respective franchise seasons, for example Barkley, eight Sixer seasons, .565 average, then his playoff rating number (see my point system below) and combined it in the 'C' part. This ain't to tell us who's the best ever or who coulda/woulda/shoulda outplayed whom in a freaking one-on-one game -- this is how the players led their teams/cities through thick and thin during number of years. Some bonafide superstars just haven't had the opportunity slash desire to play somewhere so long to make the list (Wilt Chamberlain, Moses Malone). Also, some franchise stars have played most of their power years together (Stockton-Malone's 1985-03, West-Baylor's 1960-72); good luck with determining who was the better player overall (actually, you can make a case for either of the two), so they deserve to be ranked here. Unfortunately for the all-time super greats like Scottie Pippen or Kevin McHale, nobody sane would ever claim they were better players than MJ or Bird, respectively, thus they are off the ranks. Now onto arguably the biggest flaw in F.S.R.: as in the D-Wade's case -- his last four seasons he had the awesome help of one dude named James; you can’t say with a straight face that Wade was the best player on the team in every one of his eleven Heat seasons. I told you, this is an imperfect science. Honestly, I admit the table of 60 may be incomplete, but I tried to incorporate everyone who was worthy of all-time status AND fulfilled said prerequisites. In fact, Ken Shouler's and Elliot Kalb's lists of 50 greatest N.B.A. players of all time were of a great help to 2007 Luke_Mellow. As you'll see, the way the numbers shook out produced a ranking that conformed very much with a fan's conventional wisdom, with a few interesting exceptions ('Melo's Nuggets over Isiah's Pistons?). In other words, it's nice to know that the numbers have our backs. Finally, this past weekend I created something called the 85-Point Club: I added up a player's overall ranking total, number of seasons in which he led his team and his MVP/Finals MVP count during that period, and if the number topped 85, that means we are talking about a member of the pantheon of true franchise players.(In case you're wondering, what are LeBron's chances to join the 85 Club? Let's says the Cavs win 180 regular season games in these next three seasons (LBJ's win % after 10 Cavalier seasons: .645), they three-peat in the next three Finals (LBJ's Playoff rating: 3.10; clinching Top 13 Overall ranking), and James has 3 Finals MVPs, 5 MVPs (as a Cav)... that computes to 85.60. Tough, but not impossible, right?) There are nine members of the club in all, and every one of 'em won at least three N.B.A. championships for his franchise, except for the poor, ringless Mailman. Shaquille. Kobe. Kareem. Larry. Bill. Michael. Earvin. Tim. Enjoy.

A. Win percentage, regular season*

1 Larry Bird CELTICS /1979-92/ .721** (--88-89)

2 Magic Johnson LAKERS /1979-91, 95-96/ .717

3 Tim Duncan SPURS /1997-14/ .706

4 Bill Russell CELTICS /1956-69/ .705

5 Shaq O'Neal LAKERS /1996-04/ .693

6 Michael Jordan BULLS /1984-93, 95-98/ .685 (--85-86, --94-95)

7 David Robinson SPURS /1989-03/ .682 (--96-97)

8 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar LAKERS /1975-89/ .676

9 Julius Erving SIXERS /1976-87/ .670

10 Bob Cousy CELTICS /1950-63/ .665

11 Kevin Johnson SUNS /1988-98, 99-00/ .648 (--99-00)

12 George Mikan LAKERS /1948-54, 55-56/ .646

13 Kobe Bryant LAKERS /1996-14/ .645 (--13-14)

14 Karl Malone JAZZ /1985-03/ .642

15 John Havlicek CELTICS /1962-78/ .639

16 Sidney Moncrief BUCKS /1979-89/ .636

17 John Stockton JAZZ /1984-03/ .633

18 Billy Cunningham SIXERS /1965-72/ .628

19 Jerry West LAKERS /1960-74/ .627

20 Gary Payton SONICS /1990-03/ .619

21 Dave Cowens CELTICS /1970-80/ .615

22 LeBron James CAVS /2003-10/ .608

23 Dirk Nowitzki MAVS /1998-14/ .605

24 Alonzo Mourning HEAT /1995-02, 05-08/ .601 (--00-01, --07-08)

25 Steve Nash SUNS /1996-98, 04-12/ .598

26 Dwyane Wade HEAT /2003-14/ .594

27 Carmelo Anthony NUGGETS /2003-10/ .588

28 Walt Frazier KNICKS /1967-77/ .587

29 Elvin Hayes BULLETS /1972-81/ .584

30 Yao Ming ROCKETS /2002-09, 10-11/ .580 (--10-11)

31 Wes Unseld BULLETS /1968-81/ .579

31 Oscar Robertson ROYALS /1960-70/ .579

31 Dwight Howard MAGIC /2004-12/ .579

34 Hakeem Olajuwon ROCKETS /1984-01/ .575

35 Dolph Schayes NATIONALS/SIXERS /1949-64/ .569 (--63-64)

36 Isiah Thomas PISTONS /1981-94/ .565

36 Charles Barkley SIXERS /1984-92/ .565

38 George Gervin SPURS /1976-85/ .563

38 Kevin Durant THUNDER/SONICS /2007-14/ .563

40 Joe Dumars PISTONS /1985-99/ .561

41 Patrick Ewing KNICKS /1985-00/ .560 (--97-98)

42 Reggie Miller PACERS /1987-05/ .558

42 Willis Reed KNICKS /1964-74/ .558 (--71-72, --73-74)

44 Walter Davis SUNS /1977-88/ .557 (--84-85)

45 Clyde Drexler BLAZERS /1983-95/ .551

46 Dominique Wilkins HAWKS /1982-93/ .544

47 Hal Greer SIXERS/NATIONALS /1958-73/ .541

48 Paul Pierce CELTICS /1998-13/ .538

49 Bob Pettit HAWKS /1954-65/ .537

50 LaMarcus Aldridge BLAZERS /2006-14/ .531

51 Kevin Garnett WOLVES /1995-07/ .526

52 Alex English NUGGETS /1980-91/ .516

53 Elgin Baylor LAKERS /1958-72/ .512 (--70-71, --71-72)

54 Paul Arizin WARRIORS /1950-62/ .510

55 Allen Iverson SIXERS /1996-06/ .498

56 Bob Lanier PISTONS /1970-79/ .475

57 Chris Mullin WARRIORS /1985-97/ .467 (--94-95)

58 Dave Bing PISTONS /1966-75/ .456

59 Chris Bosh RAPTORS /2003-10/ .443

60 Mitch Richmond KINGS /1991-00/ .419

* at least 7 full seasons with the same team
** no. / franchise star / team / years / win percentage
-- reg. season record not included, played less than 30 games